Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction and methods of interpretation
- Chapter 1 The idea of the juridical state and the postulate of public law
- Chapter 2 The state of nature and the three leges
- Appendix to Chapter 2 Iustitia tutatrix, iustitia commutativa, and iustitia distributiva and their differences
- Chapter 3 The right to freedom
- Chapter 4 The permissive law in the Doctrine of Right
- Chapter 5 The external mine and thine
- Chapter 6 Intelligible possession of land
- Chapter 7 The “state in the idea”
- Chapter 8 The state in reality
- Chapter 9 International and cosmopolitan law
- Chapter 10 The “idea of public law” and its limits
- Chapter 11 Contract law I. Why must I keep my promise?
- Chapter 12 Contract law II. Kant's table of contracts
- Chapter 13 Criminal punishment
- Chapter 14 The human being as a person
- Appendix I to Chapter 14 On the logic of “‘ought’ implies ‘can’”
- Appendix II to Chapter 14 The system of rules of imputation
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 6 - Intelligible possession of land
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction and methods of interpretation
- Chapter 1 The idea of the juridical state and the postulate of public law
- Chapter 2 The state of nature and the three leges
- Appendix to Chapter 2 Iustitia tutatrix, iustitia commutativa, and iustitia distributiva and their differences
- Chapter 3 The right to freedom
- Chapter 4 The permissive law in the Doctrine of Right
- Chapter 5 The external mine and thine
- Chapter 6 Intelligible possession of land
- Chapter 7 The “state in the idea”
- Chapter 8 The state in reality
- Chapter 9 International and cosmopolitan law
- Chapter 10 The “idea of public law” and its limits
- Chapter 11 Contract law I. Why must I keep my promise?
- Chapter 12 Contract law II. Kant's table of contracts
- Chapter 13 Criminal punishment
- Chapter 14 The human being as a person
- Appendix I to Chapter 14 On the logic of “‘ought’ implies ‘can’”
- Appendix II to Chapter 14 The system of rules of imputation
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Imbedded in his discussion of property law, Kant comments that the range of a country's cannons to defend coastal waters it claims to possess is the appropriate standard for determining whether a piece of the ocean belongs to the claiming country or not. The comment comes as a surprise because it seems to raise an issue of international rather than property law. This feeling of surprise can be attributed to the traditional philosophical treatment of the issue of property rights, particularly property rights to land. Traditionally authors searching for a justification of ownership rights to land concentrated on why individuals can own land, but not on why a state has any right to an area over which it exercises its dominion. Kant, exceeding far beyond this philosophical tradition, seeks to provide one single justification for both individual and state rights to land because he realizes the issues are inseparably connected. Sections 1–17 of the Doctrine of Right, where Kant develops property law and its foundations, thus apply equally to an individual's acquisition and intelligible possession of a thing and to a state's acquisition and intelligible possession of an area of land.
In this chapter, we first discuss Kant's original community of the earth (communio fundi originaria) and the roots it has in the Grotius–Pufendorf tradition (section 1). We then explain why Kant claims that this community with its originally united will is original, meaning part of the lex iusti (section 2).
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- Kant's Doctrine of RightA Commentary, pp. 122 - 142Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010